Home delivery for many products is available in a wide variety of locations. The proliferation of the internet and online retailers, for example, means that users can order everything from televisions to groceries online (or on the phone). In many cases, these items can be delivered within a day or two, or sometimes even within a couple of hours.
Many items can be delivered by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) directly to a landing area proximate the delivery location. UAVs can be programmed to navigate to a particular location (e.g., GPS coordinates), locate a target or landing zone, and land in, or drop packages in, the landing zone. The UAVs can utilize data from a variety of sensors to affect these deliveries.
To navigate between the various locations, it may be desirable to periodically calibrate one or more of the sensors, such as the cameras or GPS sensors on the UAV. Using conventional methods, calibration can be time consuming, however, and generally requires a large amount of dedicated space. Traditional calibrations procedures for cameras, for example, use a relatively large, fixed calibration room to move past the cameras for calibration. The output from these cameras can then be recorded using an external device (e.g., a laptop computer or handheld scanner), analyzed, and external calibration software can provide a calibration solution for the various cameras and sensors on the UAV.